Life leech in Diablo 3: Unmanageable?

[davew2040]

I saw a link about this on the main page a few days back, and it got me thinking about life leech. I wrote a big post about it on the Blizzard forums, which I guess I'll just link to here:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/4362517989

Thinking back on it, life leech really was an unmitigated game design disaster, completely useless at early levels and incredibly overpowering at the highest ones. And it looks like they're keeping it unchanging in D3, except even boosting it up by making it apply to casters as well.

I imagine this may have been discussed to death on these forums by now, but... I couldn't find those discussions :P So... what's the general consensus?

[konfeta]

Depends on the damage:HP ratio and whenever life leach has a penalty for AoE attacks.

[davew2040]

Sure, it depends on all that, but I think the problem is mathematically intractable.

Your damage depends on a bunch of things, but I think you can basically summarize it as follows:

weapon * (strength|dex|int) * crit

All that stuff is going to be increasing with your gear. Now you're adding still another multiplier in the mix, life leech, that is *also* increasing with gear.

The HP equation is more like:

vitality * (life multiplier)

So... based on simple algebraic knowledge, it's clear that life leech *will* overpower that. It's only a matter of time.

And... of course, we know how it worked in Diablo 2. Poorly.

[davew2040]

With specific values, yes, you can have five multipliers that equate to a value that is smaller than two other multipliers.

But... an important characteristic of multiplication is that, given sufficient time, the five multipliers will eventually produce a value that is greater than two similarly increasing multipliers.

Diablo 3 is a highly equipment-centric game. Values *will* always be going up. That's why people run the hard content, to get the better stuff. If Blizzard releases DLC with even better stuff, then the problem will be there too.

This problem really can't be solved in an elegant way, in my opinion. The very nature of life leech as an item stat is that it will suck at low levels of gear and be too good at high levels of gear. Essentially, your question amounts to "will it be tuned just right so that it's appropriate at the level of play that we care about". That's the only question you can really answer, because it's not going to be appropriate before that *or* after that.

[starrise]

...given sufficient time, ...

If level 60 and fully decked occur before that time, then no problem!

[Spens]

With specific values, yes, you can have five multipliers that equate to a value that is smaller than two other multipliers.

But... an important characteristic of multiplication is that, given sufficient time, the five multipliers will eventually produce a value that is greater than two similarly increasing multipliers.

Diablo 3 is a highly equipment-centric game. Values *will* always be going up. That's why people run the hard content, to get the better stuff. If Blizzard releases DLC with even better stuff, then the problem will be there too.

This problem really can't be solved in an elegant way, in my opinion. The very nature of life leech as an item stat is that it will suck at low levels of gear and be too good at high levels of gear. Essentially, your question amounts to "will it be tuned just right so that it's appropriate at the level of play that we care about". That's the only question you can really answer, because it's not going to be appropriate before that *or* after that.

None of this concludes that HP will scale slower than damage as we level.

[konfeta]

So... based on simple algebraic knowledge, it's clear that life leech *will* overpower that

So... you already know what a level 60, well equipped, character's damage output and total life looks like?

Multipliers aren't magic. You can have 5 multipliers amounting to a fraction of the value of 2 multipliers because the actual value of the multipliers is important.

Sure, they will probably screw up the balance. But we won't know until we actually get to Inferno.

[konfeta]

That's the only question you can really answer, because it's not going to be appropriate before that *or* after that.

Eh... they don't have to scale item affixes linearly you know.

[davew2040]

No, I suppose not.

But what is a linearly increasing percentage-based life leech really doing for them? It's a big balance risk, for what benefit?

[konfeta]

The benefit is keeping an interesting stat in the game. If we cut out stuff on the basis of "IT MIGHT BREAK THE GAME," Diablo 3 isn't going to last a long time as a game. If it proves problematic they can adjust it the values or add specialized rules such as life leach caps, etc.